First Lines of John Richardson's "A Life of Picasso Vol 4"

"Of all of the problems besetting Picasso in late 1932, foremost was the misery of married life with his Russian wife, Olga. As recounted in volume III, the former ballerina, who had prided herself, to Picasso's ever-increasing dismay, on being an impeccably ladylike consort and hostess, had become a termagant at home."

- John Richardson, from A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943

Another excellent volume in Richardson's Picasso multi-volume biography. I appreciate how he blends facts, antidotes, and observations about Picasso's artwork in a brisk narrative. He doesn't get too bogged down in details while giving important events the space they need to thrive. My only objection about this book is that it felt too brief: It ended in 1943 as WWII was still raging and affecting everything about Picasso's life. I understand the choice - Picasso's art was about to change as he changed mistresses from Dora Marr to Francoise Gilot (as Richardson puts it, "Picasso's love for [Gilot], and hers for him, would be that of master and pupil rather than master and slave.") Still, I longed for the narrative to continue until the end of the war. With Richardson recently dying, I'm bummed that this will be the last volume and won't continue to cover the latter years of this fascinating artist's life.

First Lines of Maria Popova's "Figuring"

 "This is how I picture it:

A spindly, middle-aged mathematician with a soaring mind, a sunken heart, and bad skin is being thrown about the back of a carriage in the bone-hollowing cold of a German January. Since his youth, he has been inscribing into family books and friendship albums his personal motto, borrowed from a verse by the ancient poet Perseus: "O the cares of man, how much of everything is futile." He has weathered personal tragedies that would level most. He is now racing through the icy alabaster expanse of the countryside in the precarious hope of averting another: Four days after Christmas and two days after his forty-fourth birthday, a letter from his sister has informed him that their widowed mother is on trial for witchcraft--a fact for which he holds himself responsible."

- Maria Popova, from Figuring.

Maria Popova, the author of The Marginalian blog (nee Brain Pickings), is one of the best authors I have ever read. She summarizes the thoughts of top-notch artists and scientists, and links their works to other artists and scientists in a beautiful, thoughtful analysis that also includes artistic imagery (as seen above). The first essay in Figuring is about Johannes Kepler followed by Maria Mitchell, and along the way touches on Emerson, Douglass, Caroline Herschel (the worlds first professional women astronomer) among others. Figuring looks to be a brilliant if unclassifiable examination of the thoughts of our best thinkers on the nature of reality and beauty. I'm relishing this one.

First Lines of Liberrman and Long's "The Molecule of More"

 "Dopamine was discovered in the brain in 1957 by Kathleen Montagu, a researcher working in a laboratory at the Runwell Hospital near London. Initially, dopamine was seen simply as a way for the body to produce a chemical called norepinephrine, which is what adrenaline is called when it is found in the brain. But then then scientists began to observe strange things. Only 0.0005 percent of brain cells produce dopamine--one in two million--yet those cells appeared to exert an outsized influence on behavior."

- Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long, The Molecule of More

First Lines of Michael Gerber's "The E-Myth Revisited"

 "The E-Myth is the myth of the entrepreneur. It runs deep in this country and rings of the heroic. 

Picture the typical entrepreneur and Herculean pictures come to mind...

The legend reeks of nobility, of lofty, extra-human efforts, of a prodigious commitment to larger-than-life ideals. 

Well, while there are such people, my experience tells me they are rare."

- Michael Gerber, "The E-Myth Revisited"

Recommended as an excellent summary of what it means to work ON a business (as opposed to working IN a business), Gerber's book is extremely enlightening for someone who is trying to start his own business. Amongst a ton of insights, the most valuable one for me (so far) are the three integral business personas needed to be successful:

1. Entrepreneur. The one with the vision, that dreams of what the business could be.
   
2. Manager. The one that takes care of the tactical nuts-and-bolts of making the business run.
   
3. Technician. The one that does the work, that creates the product or deliver the service.

Many small businesses are started by technicians who dream of being their own bosses. But without cultivating the other mindsets, such people may be doomed to ever-increasing workloads without achieving the goals they set out for the business.

First Lines of David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything"

 "Most of human history is irreparably lost to us. Our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for at least 200,000 years, but for most of that time we have next to no idea what was happening." 

- The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Graeber and Wengrow's ambitious goal: To answer the question "what are the origins of social inequity?" As they introduce their themes, the overall argument is in re-examining historical assumptions (or history's "grand narrative") in the face of a new evidence, including:

• Native American criticisms of European culture and the European reaction to it, which the authors claim resulted in the dehumanization of native thought
• Biases in earlier evidence that led to faulty assumptions about basic facts about human diversity and culture

It's a fascinating read, one I'm working through slowly for there are many insights. One interesting thought: even asking the question about inequality assumes an original state of equality that quite simply didn't exist. (Life was too diverse to make such a grand statement; poor Rousseau comes in for some criticism.)

Perhaps the most useful result of this analysis is uncovering the absurdity behind so many of our historical "grand narratives." By add the voices and evidence of our early ancestors, those native and "primitive" societies who the authors convincingly describe as "...not just our cognitive equals, but our intellectual peers too." I'm very curious to see where the book will end up.

First Lines of Paul Trynka's "Starman"

 "It was a cold, wet November in 1991, like the cold, wet Novembers of his childhood, when David Bowie asked his driver to take the scenic route to the Brixton Academy. The smoke-filled coach pulled slowly down Stansfield Road, just a few hundred yards from the venue, and paused outside a large, anonymous three-storey Victorian house, before moving on."

- Paul Trynka, Starman: David Bowie - the Definitive Biography

 An excellent summary of David Bowie's life and career. Like most music bios I got lost a bit in the voluminous wash of names and locations, but I appreciated Trynka's unflinching picture of the different aspects of Bowie's career. In particular, I liked the quotes that he included from people who were left behind in Bowie's wake - many rock bios can wallow in celebratory histrionics, but Trynka's felt well balanced and informative. And it inspired me to do a deep dive into some of the more obscure albums in his discography - Earthling was a decent album of which I had only heard "I'm Afraid of Americans" - so that alone is a success. 

Reality as a Network of Processes

 "Reality is not a collection of things, it’s a network of processes.

If this is correct...we understand reality better if we think of it in terms of interactions, not individuals. We, as individuals, exist thanks to the interactions we are involved in. This is why, in classic game theory, the winners in the long run are those who collaborate.

Too often we foolishly measure success in terms of a single actor’s fortunes. This is both short-sighted and irrational."

- Carlo Rovelli

I read this as "pay attention to your relationships." Between people. Between institutions. Between systems. And between people, institutions, and systems. This environment of relationships defines what actions you take or your "success" more than anything else. As W. Edwards Deming put it: "A bad system will beat a good person every time."

A Stillness and a Sanctuary

 “Within you is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”

- Hermann Hesse